The pork pie, the foreign holiday and the suppositories.

I hear tell of distant sailors. Friends have arrived from Angle-land bearing gifts. Not gold, frankinsense and myrrh, no! Marmite and pork pies. The Marmite is for antifouling the hull.

Up here we have a fantastic bakery which makes the best pork pies in the world and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. They are best ‘et ‘ot, straight from the bakery between 9 and 10 am.

A few years ago, an acquiantance went on holiday to Malta, first time abroad. Not wanting to risk eating ‘that foreign muck’, he and his g/f laid in a good stock of these finest kind pork pies. They were wrapped in clingfilm and packed in suitcases. Travel to Heathrow, flight, arrival, bed - those pies had a good 36 hours of sweating and fermenting away. Next morning a pork pie breakfast was had, and by mid afternoon both were in hospital, arses running like glassblowers’ noses, with shattering bouts of food poisoning.

Snatched from jaws of death, they were eventually returned thin and wan to the hotel with medication: ‘Whey, ow the fuck’s we supposed ti eat these?’ Asked my friend, looking aghast.

‘Ah dean’t nah,’ his g/f replied, ‘mebbes yer cut em up.’

So they cut up the suppositories and ate them. I can’t remember if that put them in hospital a second time, I was sympathetically laughing too hard.